Cabin Crafted

Author: Cabincrafted1

  • We Survived

    The two cold days and frigid nights are in our past. Hopefully, the last of the season, but it is still 5 weeks to last frost date. The covered young plants all survived, though I need to made the fence tunnels for the two 4 foot square beds so I can drape plastic over them to make a mini hoop houses. The plastic shower curtain liners wouldn’t stay taut enough to not droop down on top of some of the seedlings. Yesterday I pulled them back tight and this morning they were droopy again.

    The chicks in the garage did fine, though they are so very crowded in the big water trough. I do want to power wash the inside of the coop before I put fresh straw in it to move them. Three are still smaller than the others, but all have feathers and I think they will be fine with the warmer nights upcoming.

    Saturdays are Farmer’s Market days and this was the first week the opening changed from 10 a.m. to 8 a.m. and I didn’t want to be there that early, so I feared it would be mobbed. It was so cold, it was mostly vendors out there, bundled up and standing out in the sun in front of or behind their stalls. The weeks goodies were purchased and we went down to Tractor Supply to get chick feed and some poultry fence so I could build a temporary pen for the big hens. They have been cooped in the Palace for a week, it is dark in there with no windows except some hardware cloth high on the south end and a hardware cloth door on the north end. Once home, a small 64 square foot pen was erected and they were allowed out into the grass to peck and scratch. If they return into the Palace on their own for the next few nights, I will remove the pen and give them free range time again.

    I don’t really want to have to set real fence posts and erect a wire fence to give them more room if they balk at using the Palace as their new home. I have the posts and the old fence wire available if I have to take that route.

    Tomorrow I will have daughter and her kiddos here for Easter dinner. I have hidden some eggs with trinkets and coins in them for an Easter Egg hunt, though I suspect grandson will find it childish as a young teen. Granddaughter will enjoy it. There are six different colors of eggs and I have assigned 3 colors to each, plus a small Chocolate bunny each, so it will be fair and no arguments (I hope). At the Farmer’s Market I bought Hot Cross buns for the bread for dinner to go with the ham, au gratin potatoes with local cheese, and a green salad or cooked vegetable. I wish the asparagus were up, but not yet. Daughter will bring deviled eggs and we will enjoy some time togther. I found out this week that both sons have had at least one vaccine, so maybe we will be able to see all of our family again soon.

  • It Wants To Be Spring . . .

    but it is struggling today, tonight, and until Saturday. The Forsythia and Daffodils are blooming. The grass has turned emerald green, the Asian Pear unfortunately is blooming as are the Blueberries and the Peach tree is just starting, so there may be no fruit from them. Last night it went down to 33f, today stays cold and windy and tonight it will drop to 20f, with tomorrow and tomorrow night nearly carbon copies.

    Since there are tiny plants in the garden, young peas, young onions, lettuce, kale, and spinach, they are protected. Last night wasn’t enough to cause damage, but tonight and tomorrow night will be.

    In the cold biting wind this morning, cheap plastic shower curtain liners that I use in rainy weather on my vending canopy were put to new use, protecting the tender growth in the garden. The sturdy little tomato plants won’t get outdoor time today or tomorrow.

    The chicks got their heat lamp lowered, though they will be moved to the coop as soon as it warms up again, they are so crowded in the big black water trough. I reconfigured their pen, putting a second layer of fence wire with smaller openings and making the pen larger while removing the narrow run. The newly enlarged pen, covered with plastic erosion fencing to keep the hawks from feasting on them once they are out and about. Yesterday the old fence wire that I used to make the temporary run to herd the hens to their new dwelling was rolled and put beside the garden until it could be moved for storage. This morning, I see the rolls blown by the wind overnight have been relocated to a field. When it warms up a few degrees or the wind dies down, I will go gather them back up and find a place to store them.

    The hens suprised me. I was sure egg production would be down due to the stress of moving and being locked up, but I have gotten 4 or 5 eggs every day since the move. They are making little ground nests in the straw, kicking any straw I put in the nesting boxes out and mostly ignoring the boxes, so it is like an Easter egg hunt every time I go to gather them, but they are laying.

    The dishwasher installer finally came on Monday, the tractor pick up was delayed with no notice as I sat here all day Tuesday awaiting them. When I called to find out when they were coming, I was told it was delayed until yesterday in the pouring rain and that I didn’t have to be here. I wish they had told me that in the first place, the day they were supposed to come was a beautiful day and our walk could have been midday instead of after dinner. I did get the blade off the tractor and moved out of their way before they got here, that thing is heavy, and though the tire was totally flat and losing the fluid fill, they drove it up on the truck and hauled it off for repair and servicing. I have no idea how long they are going to keep it, but there are no pressing needs for it right now.

    I finished 15 squares for my Breed Blanket Project by yesterday. Thirteen of them are shown here. The additional two are another like the one lower right and another of the white in the row above on the left. I don’t think I will do 15 each quarter, but I should end up with a decent sized wool throw from my year’s effort. The second April challenge doesn’t appeal to me as it would require me to spin 25 grams on my oldest spindle and 25 grams on my oldest Jenkins Turkish spindle, ply them together, and knit all 50 grams. My oldest spindle is the bottom whorl spindle I take to re enactments and I don’t like spinning on top and bottom whorl spindles since I discovered the Jenkins Turkish spindles. I may take a pass on that challenge and just work on the blanket challenge. All of the left overs from doing the squares are being knit into a much smaller log cabin pattern blanket that will become my table cover for events and craftshows. Each band of the log cabin will be labelled with the breed of wool that was spun. I am enjoying that challenge, spinning wools I have never used before or spinning some I did for the Shave ‘Em to Save ‘Em challenge only this time on spindles instead of the wheel. Between the two challenges, I have decided that my favorite wools to spin are not longwools and not the supersoft from the Merino line, but sturdier wools that mostly aren’t next to the skin soft.

    That basket is full of 25 to 100 gram samples left to be spun for the blankets. I better get busy. This month is one I have never spun before, North Ronaldsay from Scotland/Orkney Islands, fairly soft and another light gray. My second breed for the month is one I have spun on the wheel, Finn, my last dyed sample. The rest of the year will be natural white, gray, morrit, black, and tan wools.

  • Sit around and wait…

    then run like hell to get it all done. The long awaited dishwasher installation was scheduled for today with the “you will get a call when they leave Lowes” message from the installation scheduler. Well, he called at 9 a.m. to ask me if I might have used a different name on the order. Uh NO. It was finally established that the extra parts, ie hose, power cord, counter clips were with my dishwasher, but mislabelled and he would be here after he did another installation. This company installs from Bristol, TN to Roanoke, VA and services 16 Lowe’s stores. He finally showed up at 2 and got the dishwasher installed.

    After the very noisy GE we had that failed last winter, this one is so quiet I can’t even hear it running when I’m not standing beside it.

    We had errands in town that were missed over the weekend or couldn’t be done until today, so as soon as he left, we hauled into town to get everything accomplished before 4:30 when a buyer for our treadmill was due to pick it up. We were on our way home when he messaged and asked if he could come early and he beat us home, but the treadmill is on it’s way to a new home and the basement has more room for ping pong when grandkids come to visit.

    One of our errands was to pick up an alteration. I became enamoured with WoolX clothes a couple of years ago and wear them skin out year round. One of my favorite pieces is a heavy zip up hooded sweater/jacket, but it comes with a wimpy nylon coil zipper. The first one failed when the coil pulled off of the tape so I contacted WoolX and they sent me a replacement and the label to return the damaged one. Well the zipper on the second one failed in the same place, the same way, and again they replaced it and sent the return label. The third one had the same issue and they offered me a full refund as they were not in stock. I didn’t want to give it up, so they gave me a partial refund and let me keep the jacket, indicating they were going to have a discussion with their manufacturer about the zippers. I used part of the refund to pay a local tailor to put a real zipper in the hoodie and got it back today just in time for the not so springtime days coming up for a couple of midweek days and nights.

    Somehow in the activity, I managed to smack the back on my left hand on the corner of a counter top and bruised it, then gouged a chunk out of the back of my right hand on the door frame trying to help the large man and his tiny thin daughter load the treadmill into the back of the pick up truck.

    Yesterday on the way to Wilderness Road Regional Museum, I finished another square for my breed blanket. I have one more on the needles, to have finished by the end of the month, but here is a picture of the ones done this first quarter and a picture from Founder’s Day yesterday.

    The one on the needles is from the same yarn as the bottom right, but the colors are slightly different as the roving had variation in it. There is only one more dyed wool to go in, the rest are white, gray, tan, and black so the colored ones will be spread out through more of the finished blanket when done.

    Tomorrow is another sit and wait day as the John Deere Tractor dealer is coming to pick up our tractor to repair a rear tire that went flat and do an annual servicing. We have no idea when they will come.

  • Movin’ Day

    Last evening was moving day. The hens were herded and/or caught in a big fishing net or by hand and relocated to the Chicken Palace with food, water, scratch, 3 nesting boxes, and an old ladder that was cut in half and propped at angles against the roof beam to provide with with all their needs for the next week or so until they are comfortable in there and know it is “home” from now on. I expect today’s stress and the strange digs will reduce egg production this week, but that is the price I needed to pay to be able to clean up and repair the coop for the littles. The rain cooperated just long enough for me to get the move accomplished.

    It was also moving day or actually transplant day for the young tomatoes. I wanted to wait a bit longer, but the second batch needed to go in the hydroponic garden, so the first dozen were transplanted into plantable 4 inch pots, placed in a plastic container that was the perfect size and they will begin outdoor days and indoor nights until danger of frost has passed and they can go in the ground. Once they were good sized sprouts, I used another dozen of the plugs to start 4 more tomatoes because daughter wanted 6 and I generally plant 8 or 10. Since the starter tray for the plugs holds a dozen, I started some Thai basil and some Cilantro to also share with daughter. Those had sprouted or at least germinated and needed to be under the light and fan, so they are in a position to be ready to put in the ground about the time of the last frost and a short period of hardening off.

    Before putting the second set of starts in the 12 cell hydroponic garden, the water was dumped, the container cleaned out, and refilled with fresh water and plant food.

    I’m looking for another one of the resin half barrels that I have used for raspberries and often for flowers and herbs. I will transplant some of the larger herbs from the smaller hydroponic garden that Son 2’s family gave me for Christmas and start a new batch of the ones I use regularly to grow in the house. I do like clipping them and using them in salads and for cooking.

    I’m off shortly to my first event in a year. Founder’s Day at Wilderness Road Regional Museum, dressed in costume, set with wheel, spindles, wool, and some items to perhaps sell. It is outdoors and the rain chances during the 4 hours is 70% for two of the hours, zero for one, and 40% for the other. I will set up in the loom house or on a porch to demonstrate Revolutionary War period fiber preparation. My dark blue skirt will be paired with a dark blue mask which certainly wasn’t part of their garb, but will be part of mine today.

  • Saturday Projects

    Saturday’s are drive thru breakfast out and on to the Farmer’s Market. A couple of days ago, I reseeded lettuce, spinach, kale, and Lacinato kale in the garden. At the market this morning, I scored spinach and Lacinato kale starts and came home to add them to the mini head lettuce starts from a few weeks ago. They will provide greens before the seed is up and providing. I didn’t bother to water them in because the afternoon and tomorrow are rainy. Mid week, I will cover them at night for three nights because we have three nights of upper 20’s expected.

    Once a few dandelions coming up around cardboard in the paths were dug and the mulch respread, I set about making a “chicken run” from the end of the chicken’s enclosure to the Chicken Palace where the big girls will be herded this evening and locked in to acclimate to their new digs.

    That is the chicken palace behind the burn barrel which is making short work of all the scraps from the old boxes and the rotted barrel staves. I just kept adding wood until it was all gone from outside the garden. Whatever is left after I build the compost bins from the remaining boxes, will be burned another day. I sat out near it with a garden hose at the ready until it began to thunder and lightening and I moved to the inside of the garage where I could keep an eye on it. Once it was just a smoldering layer in the bottom, the rain began hard. I expect it is mostly out now, but the new plants got watered in.

    One of the display pieces, I have wanted for vending events is a decorative ladder. I have looked for one unsuccessfully, so yesterday, a trip to the big box hardware store and a purchase of two oak boards, two oak dowels, and a package of screws gave me the supplies I needed to make my own. It is put together, given one coat of poly stain and finish and ready to take with me tomorrow to the museum for Founder’s Day.

    It is the same height and rung spacing as my folded rack seen in the left of this photo below.

    Tomorrow, I will leave the piece that can attach to the table at home and use the rack and ladder to display items for sale. I expect it will be too warm to sell many knits, but maybe the yarn and woven bags might sell and I am going to hold an end of season sale. What I am taking is packed in the car and ready to go.

    The chicks were moved to the garage last week into the large RubberMaid water tank to give them more room. At 4 and 5 weeks old, they are no longer the cute little fuzzies that they were, they are gawky teenagers with feathers, long wings and a propensity to try to escape whenever the screens are moved off to add food, water, or clean shavings. I have raised the heat lamp well above them, but left the heat tables in. They may need it mid week with the colder nights, but they are only a couple of weeks from moving to the coop. Daughter is going to loan me her power washer and I am going to powerwash the inside of the coop, repair a few pieces of outside trim, and repaint or stain it before I move them over. The narrow run off of the pen is going to be removed and the pen enlarged to give them more running around space until they are large enough to free range. I will cover the top of the pen with bird net to keep the hawks from picking off the chicks to feed their own chicks. I lost three young birds a couple of years ago before the pen and run were covered.

    There are still 15 in there, but 3 or 4 are so much smaller than the others, I need them to get some size before I can turn them loose in the pen.

    After I move the adult birds this evening, I will work on the coop and fencing next week and get it all ready for the littles.

  • Environmental concerns

    Each day I see another news article about the amount of plastic in our oceans and our landfills. Another article that reiterates that every piece of plastic that has been made still exists. Another article, that most plastics can’t be or aren’t being recycled.

    I drive by the local hay storage fields and see large round bales wrapped in non biodegradable white plastic. As the winter moves into spring, those fields are littered with the white plastic that was torn off of the bale before feeding it to the herds or flocks. I see that plastic in the streams and creeks that flow down to the New River, on to the Ohio River and the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico.

    I try to not buy or use one use plastic plastic, but with Covid, you can no longer take your reuseable cup or mug to be refilled, if you want to eat out, it is take out and though we are seeing more and more use of cardboard containers, there are still styrofoam clamshells used by some food places. When you go in the grocer or even the Farmer’s Market, items are in plastic, so it is difficult to avoid.

    Each year I stress when the garden starts providing food that doesn’t get canned in reuseable glass jars with reuseable canning lids, food that is destined to be frozen like peas and beans because the available containers are plastic bags or boxes. I tried wide mouth glass jars one year and had a lot of breakage. Yesterday an ad popped up for compostable 32 ounce bamboo fiber containers with snap on lids. They are hand washable, can go in the microwave or even the oven up to certain temperatures and when you are done, they compost in 90 days. That sounds like a winner. I can freeze peas in a smaller silicone bag and then remove them and pack several lumps in one container. Blanched green beans can be frozen on a cookie sheet and packed loosely. The snap on lids can be labelled with paper tap or written directly on the lid. I ordered a 50 pack to try this year. I hope that I have found a more environmentally friendly way to save my produce that I don’t want to can in glass for the shelves.

    Our state has recently enacted legislation that will ban styrofoam and single use plastic by 2025. I see even Glad coming out with alternatives to plastic. I hope there is more of this type of restriction and innovation and less plastic in our future. I wonder how many of our health problems are the result of the rapid increase in the use of plastic in our environment and our everyday life. We already know that the industry has had to change the formulation to remove certain chemicals. Lets hope for change.

  • Rainy Day Olio – 3/25/2021

    Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

    My Facebook memory for the day shows snow 3 years ago, so I have to keep reminding myself that it is spring on the calendar, but still 6 weeks to the last average frost. I am not patient when it comes to the garden. Once I start, I want to plant, to harvest, to start putting by for the off seasons, then I look at the pantry shelves and freezer and realize we haven’t used all of last year’s stuff up yet. I have never had much luck starting my own seeds that aren’t direct sown, but the new hydroponic unit with 12 plugs has the healthiest little dozen tomato plants. The unit has LED lights and a gentle fan so the plants are sturdy and only several inches tall, not shooting for the moon as leggy starts.

    Eventually they will be transplanted into 4″ plantable pots and start spending part of each day outdoors on the deck, but not yet. Most of the starts of spinach, kale, and mesclun greens that I transplanted and then covered with plastic didn’t get enough water from the rains and few survived. The 8 mini head lettuces that I bought at the Farmer’s Market as transplants are doing great. Yesterday after morning showers and before today’s rain, I direct sowed more lettuce, kale, lacinato kale, and spinach in the bed and left the plastic off. I see no frost nights until late next week and I will cover them just for the nights then.

    I have resumed my love affair with spindles over the past year. They are so portable and can be put down on the side table and left until I’m ready to return to them. They can be put in a tin and dropped in my bag to take with me in the car, and the smaller ones can even be used when hubby is driving as long as the road isn’t too winding. On a spindle I can create fine, even, consistent yarns, the small balls wound together and plied on either a larger spindle or even on my wheel. My wheel has suffered neglect this year. To use it by my chair, I have to move the ottoman and move the wheel every time I need to get up. But day before yesterday, I chose to pull it over and decided to finish spinning a 5 ounce braid of very soft wool/silk blend I had started on the spindles. It took me two days to finish spinning two very full bobbins and plying it on my jumbo flyer and large bobbin. I told hubby I thought it was about 1000 yards of singles spun.

    I finished plying it last night and let it sit overnight before winding it off this morning. I was close, it is a two ply yarn, lace weight, and finished at 484.5 yards, so it was 969 yards of singles. It is a very pretty, soft and drapey yarn that has been washed and is drying now. The spindle is the one my hubby gave me for my birthday last November and it is spinning wool for my breed blanket. I should have 14 or 15 squares finished by the end of the month. I will lay them all out and take a picture then.

    When a spindle isn’t in use, it is safely nested in it’s own little compartment on thick felt in this box. When out and about, it travels in a tin like one of these, nested on a bed of the fiber being spun on it.

    On Sunday, the museum where I used to go and spin in costume, regularly, is scheduled to have Founder’s Day. As I am fully vaccinated and the event is supposed to be outdoors, I plan to attend as a period spinner with wheel and spindles, combs, and cards, and wool I washed to process for spinning. The event has other re enactors, carriage rides (pre-registered) through town, but the weather app is showing a 90% chance of rain. I can’t take a wheel, yarn, and knits out in the yard in the rain. I guess I will wait and see if the forecast improves or see if I can be on the roofed porch, still “outdoors,” but protected. I will be so glad when it is safe to resume life again.

  • Vacation in the mountains

    As a child we spent a week every summer in the Virginia mountains having travelled from the coast. It was a big “family” reunion, family being both biological and folks we saw but once a year, every year in the same cottage.

    When we had children of our own, there were a few visits to the same location and other visits to Big Meadows on the Skyline Drive in the mountains of Virginia on the opposite side of the Shenandoah Valley.

    Before children, I backpacked in the mountains with a Trail Club and then both sons became Scouts and I took up backpacking again, going as one of the troop adults on many weekend trips, a couple bringing us near where we currently live.

    As our children became old enough to leave home or stay home alone, hubby and I began taking one weekend a year with my Dad and Stepmom to a B&B somewhere away from both of our homes near the coast, usually to the Piedmont of Virginia, they would plan one year and we would plan the next.

    As retirement approached, we began looking for a place to build a retirement home and I wanted to move to the mountains. I was most familiar with the Shenandoah Valley areas, but land was so expensive there. Son 1 had hiked the Appalachian Trail and then rode his bicycle from New Orleans and both times coming though the south western part of Virginia. He suggested we look here for land and we found our farm in the Virginia Mountains, a few short miles from the Appalachian Trail, near the West Virginia line, in the county that was the birth place of my maternal grandfather. We built our home here.

    I have learned old homestead skills, canning, spinning, raising chickens, making soaps, some herbal medicine knowledge to make healing salves. Along the way, got involved in the history of the area and began to do some 18th century re-enactment using my spinning and fiber history.

    We have a lovely small University town only 15 miles away, trails to walk, ponds and lakes to visit, ever changing flora and fauna. I feel like I’m always on vacation in the mountains now.

    Coltsfoot blooming on a trail.
    Winter resident geese at a local pond. They usually stay until their young fledge.

  • It’s done, it’s done

    Yesterday and today were glorious dry, blue sky, spring like days and I was going to rest and recover. The storms attacking the southern states are headed our way and tomorrow it is going to rain and rain and rain. I have been trying since December to get VDOT to come clear our culvert and re dig the ditch above it as the crusher run from the last maintenance has the ditch filled almost to the road grade. I have filed work requests online, talked to them on the telephone, filed another work request and still no action. Yesterday, DH and I went up with the tractor, a garden fork, and a shovel and the two senior citizens managed to get a 5 foot area cleared above the upper end of the culvert, however the pipe itself is about half full of debris and the ditch above is still full of gravel and sand. We don’t want the rain to create gullies in our driveway. I filed a follow up report with VDOT to let them know that we managed to barely open it but it still needs work, but I doubt it will come to any good. When I filed one last July, they came and did the work but left the work order open. When I file again, they just close the new work order, leaving the July one open. When I called, I tried to get her to close the July one and leave the December one open, but she closed December and wrote comments. So that day of rest and recover was shot.

    Today we went for a walk on the rail grade, then went and got the remaining bags of mulch and since I didn’t rest yesterday, I went ahead and put down more weed fabric and mulched the back side that I had run out of mulch doing a few days ago. There are 3 bags left to use after the garlic is harvested and that last box is closed in. I dug up most of the comfrey that was on the side of the garden and moved some of it up to the upper corner where last year’s compost had been and some of it to the walled garden I built last summer. That will allow me to mulch up to the top of the box that is unfinished for now.

    To make sure the new starts are well protected from possible hail tomorrow and three nights of freezing temperatures, I reinforced the mini greenhouse I had built. After the storms tomorrow and before Friday night’s 27 degrees, I will add an insulation layer of some sort over it as well.

    The chicks are now 3 1/2 weeks and 4 1/2 weeks old. Three of them still look like cute little chicks, but most of them are gawky adolescents with long legs and little feathers sticking out all over the place, and they try to fly out of the brooder every time I move the baby gate that is on the top.

    It doesn’t take long for them to cease being cute little fuzzy creatures. After the cold weekend, they will be moved to the big feed tank brought into the garage to give them more space. They empty the feeder and the water daily now. In about a week, the big hens will be moved to the other coop and locked in for about a week to get them used to that location and the smaller coop will be thoroughly cleaned and sanitized so it can get dry before the little ones move out there in mid April, where they will be locked in for a week to get used to their new home. Some dustbath holes need to be filled, the run possibly shortened as there are some spots where the smaller birds could get under the fence.

    Knowing that the run will be a muddy mess tomorrow, after I locked up the hens, I tossed down a new layer of old hay so I don’t fall on my keister when I go over to let them out in the morning.

    Somehow in my efforts to feed all the critters, lay mulch, and clean me up afterwards, I managed to cut my left index finger (I’m left handed) and my right second finger so now both hands are sore. All the garden effort and the skin injuries have certainly cut into my spinning and knitting time so far this month. I have managed to spin enough of the Dorset Horn to knit two squares for my Breed Blanket Project, and just enough to count for the other challenge has been spun. Maybe with the rainy days ahead and with nothing else that can be done in the garden until planting time, I can finally rest and recover and maybe get some more spinning and knitting done.

    This is the first square for March, now there are two.

    I just finished reading “The Salt Path” by Raynor Winn, a memoir of a year in her life with her husband after double devastating events. It certainly caused me to stop and be thankful for what I have and my health, even if I come in sore, bruised, and battered from my farm and garden work. It is well written and well worth the time to read.

    I would like to read her second book, but it isn’t available at our library.

  • I want to say I’m done, but I’m not.

    We went out and bought a dozen more bags of mulch. I wrestled some stubborn grass clumps that had come up over and through the weed fabric, laid more where needed, put down the last of the cardboard in the narrow paths, and started spreading the mulch. I had hardly begun when a light cold drizzle began. It wasn’t supposed to start raining until tonight. I worked on through until I had the gate side, the narrow paths, the south end, and the blueberry bed mulched and realized that there were only two more bags, not enough to do the chicken run side and the rain was getting more persistent, so I quit.

    These are before and after pictures of the entire garden before this week’s work.

    This was last year after I tried to reinforce the thin cedar boxes, dug out the mint bed where the white bag is laying and put down hay as mulch. Seeing the tomatoes planted in the upper right box and the comfrey up beside it, it was later in the season.

    Here it is after the week’s work, taken from the opposite end. The plastic over the young greens is about where the mint bed was dug out for perspective. The large box to the left of the barrels is where there is no box in the upper photo’s top right. I tried to grow corn there last year unsuccessfully. The boxes are sturdier, the mulch is shredded wood mulch over cardboard or weed fabric. The two remaining bags of mulch awaiting some sunshine or at least no rain to finish the last bit on the right side. You can see two of the old boxes that didn’t crumble when I pulled them up, leaning against the fence. They along with 4 more you can’t see in the upper right corner are going to be taken apart and the boards used to create a two bin compost pile up in that corner and that area will be mulched only with hay. It has been a lot of work, but I am hopeful that it will reduce work in the long run and will produce better harvest in some areas that did not grow well.